ABSTRACT
This day, however, I want to name only one of these places, the desert. The desert, in the spiritual traditions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, is the place of testing, temptation, and illumination; the place where new perspectives can be gained. John of the Cross writes of the mystical wisdom that arises in the “secret abyss” when one is “led into a remarkably deep and vast wilderness … into an immense, unbounded desert …”3 The desert has been used as a trope, an “aporetical place” that has “no way out or assured path” by many who have struggled in solitude for wisdom and
perspective. But which desert? Whose desert? How can we in this city touch it? How does it touch us? And what is still left to come from it, which we perhaps cannot see? When we name the desert, what places do we name? Who goes there?
